Maeboshi is suffering from a lack of public water supply. Combined with the closing of public pools and a stringent lock on water faucets, these make getting water a Herculean task. This situation is set to worsen during a heatwave due to a lack of precipitation along with vehicles that offer water being dirty for publicity. Within this context, Shunsaku Iwakiri (Toma Ikuta) is forced to cut off water supply from families who are unable to pay worrying bills, showing bureaucratic detachment. However, he does regularly visit a coarse Koide family and ignores their inability to pay. Keiko and Kumiko (Yamazaki Nanami and Yuzuho) do however try to bond with their mother who is trying to find a partner. As their situation keeps getting worse, Iwaki does try to give them some water when he is alongside his colleague Takuji Kida (Hayato Isomura).
In order to survive, the sisters have no other option but to start robbing their local convenience store. It’s at this point that Iwakiri has to grapple not only with the separation from his wife, who took their child, and with his sense of wrong as well. In his book, Takayashi manages to set aside a good time highlighting the practicum’s negative influence on people and its over-reliance on human resources, but Takayashi’s ‘Dry Spell’, on the other and, seeks to find and clarify the intrinsic issues, guilt and responsibilities that in fact the absence of human interactions has created for Japanese society at large.
Keiko’s current mental state is such a toll, having already been the mother and sister to Kumiko before abandoning her, her capacity for childhood is all but depleted. To resolve memories that are emotionally hard to grasp, she suppresses her fragility from everyone around her, rather like the adults she mingles with. ‘Dry Spell’, as she demonstrates through her selfless dedication to her sister and Iwakiri’s ambition to reclaim his humanity and his beliefs, though reaching its climax in an unnaturally sickly sweet manner, draws attention to the reality that it involves more than just water.
While seated literally opposite from one another You and I, Keiko and Iwakiri perhaps, have one thing in common: they both grew up and lived their lives in a world of self abandonment and do not feel particularly inclined to trust people who have been devilishly stained in a manner. Here, both Ikuta and Nanami expose their inner truths through their eyes, body language and facial cues in lieu of dialogue; their nuanced performances. The unyielding twosome effortlessly attire their masks to conceal the emotions wrought, contradicting Yuzuho and Isomura’s innocent ignorance. The words spoken by the flick Kawabayashi so to say, basing the film on a source, was supported by the unexcelled minor roles and turned out to be all too much true to life. The work of Kawabayashi was a great compliment.
I can almost assure you that throughout its runtime it is well paced and conditions its editing to suit any revelatory moments of the story. And so the cast is forced further and further into displaying their vulnerabilities the more difficult the water and heat issues become for Takahashi and his cast.
Ryutaro Hakamada is deliberately making the main characters more and more cut off from their surroundings while they scour the earth, what remains of it, for their lives, against a dry and seared context. The implications of action taken by the water department, which is the focus of this text, are able to do so, as the context where these events unfold is strikingly unfavorable, and the whole situation is rather timid, then both Hwakiri and Keiko seamlessly evolve.
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